~ There's no metaphysics on Earth like dessert.

Monthly Archives: November 2012

‘Tis now officially the season between holidays, with the glorious gluttony of Thanksgiving in the rear-view and the specter of Chrismahanukwanzakah looming large on the horizon. It is also the season between seasons, that limbo when the leaves have long fallen from the trees and the temperatures are dropping, dropping….

I am loath to say goodbye to fall. I like to indulge in apple and spice flavors for as long as possible before peppermint and eggnog take over, so any way I can prolong these tastes is a boon in my mind. Unfortunately, autumn apples are much harder to preserve than summer berries. Apple butter is a far cry from strawberry jam. Apple cider is great but harder to find and not usually portable.

Leave it to Liddabit Sweets, the Brooklyn artisanal confectioner, to devise such a thing as apple cider caramels to keep the apple flavor fresh long past October.

It has now been over three weeks since Sandy hit, and while some parts of New York City and the northeast are still in recovery mode, for most people in the five boroughs (save, perhaps, Staten Island) life has essentially returned to normal. Power is largely returned, offices have reopened, every subway line is running (albeit with service changes).

Even the weather has stabilized a bit. Sort of. We went from the most devastating storm in the city’s history to calm skies, to a blizzard, to an unseasonably warm and sunny weekend. I can only speak for myself, but judging from the number of people out on that beautiful weekend, I don’t think I was the only one overjoyed to ditch the puffy coat and recharge my Vitamin D.

Naturally, the thing to do on a glorious Sunday is to take a walk. So that’s what I did. I put on my walking shoes and marched myself over to the Manhattan Bridge, where the DUMBO Smorgasburg was doing a brisk business.

It was my first time at this new Smorgas post, and while DUMBO seems a tad smaller than it’s sibling to the north, the offerings were still appetizing and inventive. Also pleasing to see was that almost half of tents were hawking some sweet good. There were doughnuts and candy, macarons and macaroons, pies of all sizes, even homemade pop tarts. So many choices, so little space in my stomach…

With all these options, which did I go for? The adorable mini cheesecakes? A slice of s’mores pie? A four bite tartelette?

When Northern Spy Food Co. opened in the East Village in 2009, it immediately felt like a neighborhood institution, something that had grown organically with the greening and cleaning up of Alphabet City. For some, the grime east of Tompkins Square Park was part of the charm, one of the last gritty parts of lower Manhattan; for the newer implants, the arrival of a seasonally-minded restaurant, one that proudly (some might say obnoxiously) wears its purveyors on its sleeve, couldn’t come soon enough.

The interesting thing about Northern Spy Food Co. has been its insistence on maintaining a low profile, preferring to blend into the community rather than shine above it. Despite a glowing New York Times write-up in 2010 and constant appearances on “Best Of” roundups, Northern Spy Food Co. tends to eschew the spotlight, favoring homey Sunday Suppers and a lunch delivery service over glitzy publicity stunts and a haughty hostess stand. Really, the only pretentious thing about the place is their aforementioned insistence on listing farms and purveyors, but even that can be construed as earnest, not mimetic.

As such, you end up with a menu that is thoughtful and well executed, but ultimately comforting and filling. This is not fragile food, although some components are handled delicately. Yes, there is the obligatory kale salad, but it is shredded and showered with shaved clothbound cheddar. There are sticky buns, savory, stuffed with pork, iced with parsnip glaze.

I hope that you are comfortably reading this in your office or wherever you elect (Ha, get it? Elect? Go Obama!) to spend your days, and, more importantly, that it didn’t take you hours to get to that location via hobbled, gridlocked public transportation. After a week in my beloved Brooklyn, even I had exhausted the bountiful online television options and tired of fighting off the other housebound young’uns for a seat at a standing-room-only coffee shop. Novelty wears off all too soon, but it goes even faster when you are confined to a limited swath of one borough. I was (shockingly) looking forward to a return to normality, the daily grind even.

And in my mind, there is one food that is a near metaphor for work and office life, and that food, my friends, is the doughnut.